Since it's release, I've played this game more than any other. I just keep coming back to it. It reminds me of an old Avalon Hill board game, Victory in the Pacific.

8.31.10 5:33 PM

Daraf (Guest)

A lot of Simulation Without a Lot of Your Time

This is a strategic level simulation of the Pacific War in World War Two with limited tactical control. There approximately 30 geographic locations on the map connected by sea lanes. This game is based on one month turns. At the beginning of each turn the player decides which geographic locations to invade, raid, patrol or supply. There is some ability to transfer airplanes to a base from other nearby bases. The player also decides which ships to assign to which missions, or to send them to port for repair. Once the strategic decisions are set, the tactical phase begins. At the end of the tactical phase, your ships may put into any friendly port, which means you may have to look for them to give them their next mission.

Combat only occurs in the vicinity of the geographic locations. Ships against shore based aircraft combat occurs in raids and invasions. If the enemy has assigned some naval assets to patrol the location then ship to ship warfare can occur. The tactical choices are limited to choosing to withdraw, engage in air to surface combat or to engage in surface to surface combat. If aircraft are involved you can assign the fighters to either escort friendly strike aircraft or to protect the fleet. You cannot assign targets. The leads to frustration as you watch your dive bombers pass up carriers and rain bombs down on the Yamato which has the ability to absorb dozens of bomb hitS. But, that is the way it went; the bombers sometimes could not find the carriers.

Ships are modeled down to the cruiser level. I suppose there must be invisible destroyers that accompany the other ships. That is the only way I can account for all those long lance torpedoes. Only the Japanese ships have torpedoes. The Allies' anti-aircraft firepower improves over the course of the game. This seems to be modeled by giving ships that join the war later more AA ability. This produces some inversions of reality. For example, USS Texas arriving in 1945 has 50% more AA ability than USS Washington which arrives in 1942. It appears that all the ships in a battle contribute to AA performance of the fleet, so it all averages out. It also appears that Allied aircraft get better as the game goes on, but that may be just the effect of larger numbers.

British carriers have only fighters and torpedo planes. There are no fighter-bomber planes. Your fighters can only fight against other aircraft. Some significant classes of US ships do not appear including Atlanta (AA Cruisers), Cleveland and the escort carriers. The cruisers would add significant AA ability. It might have been over whelming. There are no kamikazes. Maybe it is a wash. There seems to be a higher percentage of hits than in the actual war, but the ships can survive a greater number of hits than in the actual war, so it is about right with regard to the ability of aircraft to sink ships.

You can create your own scenarios. The scenario files are XML which can be edited in notepad or almost any word processor. I like notepad because its limited ability produces limited side effects. It is a little tricky, but you can add in the missing cruisers. Adding the escort carriers is a problem. You can make them either US or British ships. If the former, then they will carry dive bombers, which they did not actually have, or they can be British, but they might get recalled to the Atlantic.

But all in all, I do have a lot of fun playing this game. As advertised, it takes about three hours to play the full game. You can play either side and either side can win. As far as I can tell, this game is bug free and well behaved.